Sepharo wrote on Mar 30, 2010, 01:03:I should have specified that I was referring to the lack of collision.

Unless I'm mistaken and it actually has that.

It doesn't, and collisions totally wouldn't work in TrackMania. The main purpose of the game is to achieve the fastest times, not to get in eachother's way. The roads aren't wide enough to allow for overtaking either.If you want collisions, most other racing games fit the bill, but TrackMania isn't and never was that kind of game.

We wouldn't need to switch to another game to try other modes. TrackMania also offers Rounds (all players start at the same time and points are awarded according to finish order), Cup (Rounds across multiple tracks), Team (Rounds, but in two teams), Laps (all players start together on a multilap track), and even a Stunts mode.

But these only work for more experienced players, and TimeAttack mode is the most accessible for the general public, hence I picked that for the TM server.

Hoop wrote on Mar 26, 2010, 13:46:Will there be too much latency for people out side the US?

Since you didn't ask this in the TM server thread, I can only assume it's a general question -- to which no single answer is possible.

In other words, it really depends on the pertaining game. TMF is pretty lenient about connections (it normally uses UDP and only falls back to TCP if needed). I am playing from the Netherlands, and have no lag or anything.

Why did we choose TrackMania Nations Forever for our experiment to host a multiplayer game server? It's not because I have been a very active member of the TM community for the past several years, although that certainly helps in setting up the server.

The server that hosts the Blue's News website has spare capacity and bandwidth, and Blue and I thought this could be a fun way to utilize it.

We figured that a team-based game isn't very suited, as those aren't much fun when there are too few players to fill most roles. So it has to be a free-for-all game, like a deathmatch FPS or a racing game. This rules out titles like TeamFortress 2, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and golden oldie Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. A four-player game like Left 4 Dead (2) is also not very useful as a website's game server.

Secondly, it should be a game with a low entry barrier, so preferably a free game or a demo with sufficient content, though demos rarely get dedicated servers. A retail game with a large active player base could work too, but otherwise the game server is likely to remain fairly empty most of the time.

Thirdly, it needs to be a game for which a dedicated Linux server is available, which drastically reduces the number of options, especially in contemporary games. For titles from the past few years, we're aware the following meet this requirement:

It's hard to tell without current stats, but most of these titles don't appear to have the large player bases that they once had.

Lastly, while not a server requirement as such, setting up and testing the server typically requires the client, so a retail game that we don't own is less likely to get its multiplayer server here. And to be honest, I own only seven of the above titles (not counting AArmy).

For a gaming news site that originated in the first-person shooter scene, a racing game is not an obvious choice, so we have no idea what the uptake of this TMNF server will be. But in view of the above considerations, and the relative lack of modern titles that meet the requirements, TMNF seems as good a choice as any.

So what do you think, do you appreciate this initiative, or do you have a suggestion for another game we could try later down the road? Let us know.